PTS Update 29 - Feedback Thread for Combat & Classes

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for any combat or class change. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance and changes.

FrancisCrawford

Hi!

"Magic damage" has long and confusingly had two meanings.
1. A specific damage type, for example in the tooltips for magic damage skills.
2. An unspecified elemental damage type, for example in the tooltips for Wall of Elements and other destruction staff skills.

Please change the second usage to "Magical", now that you've thought of the word.

Thank you!

UntouchableHunter

I would love to see a better vampire skill line.
Werewolfs are so strong and I was waiting for something better for vampire, maybe a execute skill would be great.

You guys buffed a little the Coag blood but was not enough last patch and I feel the same. One of the most expensive class skill with a weak heal does not make sense for me.

ealdwin

Suggestion Regarding Weapon Passives:

The changes to weapon passives in order to make them more useful to hybrid specs is very welcome and a pleasant change. However, there are a few passives that could be tweaked to further this goal that were not addressed in this patch.

One Hand And Shield
Sword and Board: Considering the changes to the Twin Blunt and Blade Passive (DW), please look at granting this passive a flat increase to both Weapon and Spell Damage, effectively making it useful for hybrids.

Destruction Staff
Penetrating Magic: As mentioned in another thread, it would worthwhile to consider granting this ability a flat increase to Penetration rather than ignoring only Spell Resistance. (See this thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/559481/what-about-destruction-staves)

Restoration Staff
Restoration Master: Consider changing this passive, so that it grants a flat increase to Spell and Weapon Damage, effectively increasing the power of all heals, rather than its current state which only increases Restoration Staff heals by 5%.

mylove11

Ballista and its morphs can be reflected by sword and board ult and avoided by dodge rolls and are treated as projectiles but BOLT ESCAPE cannot absorb them , this causes issues as sorcs still die after bolt escape as a projectile from balista still hits us , please correct this , if bolt escape is still being hit by a stam projectile then its very troublesome for a mag class with one skill slot to avoid all ranged damge but still dying due to a ranged skill makes ability very less effective

GrumpyDuckling

Can you please look into changing the Hawk Eye passive for the bow? The damage build-up mechanic doesn't really fit with the theme of archery.

(WITH A BOW EQUIPPED) Dealing damage with a Light or Heavy Attack increases the damage of your Bow abilities by 5% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.

YandereGirlfriend

Reaper's Mark was nerfed in the last patch (Major Berserk reduced from +30% to +10% Damage) but nothing was done to compensate the skill.

The duration is still 5 seconds but for a buff that is 1/3 as powerful. Please remedy this situation.

Firstmep

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Reaper's Mark was nerfed in the last patch (Major Berserk reduced from +30% to +10% Damage) but nothing was done to compensate the skill.

The duration is still 5 seconds but for a buff that is 1/3 as powerful. Please remedy this situation.

Tons of skills were affected and frankly that was their likely intention.
Dark flare also lost a fair amount from major defile, and it got further nerf to its damage this patch.

echo2omega

I think you need to double down on the armor changes...

Light armor should be about mobility and penetration. Move lightning fast, hit hard at the risk of being caught. Meant to pierce thought the heaviest or armor.

2% move speed (not just sprint speed) per armor piece. (this also effects stealth move speed)
3% Reduced the cost of roll dodge per piece
1% reduction in magic damage per piece.
1% INCREASE in martial damage per piece.
469/939 Spell Penetration AND Martial penetration per piece.
363/726 Spell Resistance per piece.



Medium armor is about being difficult to pin down live by the crit, die by the crit.

1% move speed (not just sprint speed) per piece of armor.
3% reduction in break free cost per piece.
2% damage reduction when immune to crowd control
234/469 [completely made these number up] martial AND spell critical chance per piece
2% martial AND spell critical damage per piece.



Heavy armor. Meant to take the big hits, maximum protection but at the cost of mobility and damage. Durable against medium armor builds, but light armor builds are equipped to pierce right through it.

(note: no move speed bonus, no penalty either. Net end result slower than the other armor options.)
2% Block cost reduction per piece
2% Bash cost reduction and damage increase per piece
1% healing received per piece
2%/4% resources returned on fully charged heavy attack per piece.
1% reduction in martial damage per piece.
1% INCREASE in magic damage per piece.
114/229/343 armor per piece


Something alone these lines offers incentive for players to opt for light and/or medium armor playing either a magicka or stamina dps build. Also further opens the door for hybrid builds.

YandereGirlfriend

Firstmep wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Reaper's Mark was nerfed in the last patch (Major Berserk reduced from +30% to +10% Damage) but nothing was done to compensate the skill.

The duration is still 5 seconds but for a buff that is 1/3 as powerful. Please remedy this situation.

Tons of skills were affected and frankly that was their likely intention.
Dark flare also lost a fair amount from major defile, and it got further nerf to its damage this patch.

I see what you mean but I think that it's a slightly different situation.

ZOS seems to view Dark Flare as a viable ranged spammable for magPlars, in which case it is a bit more understandable to have a nerfed Major Defile as part of its package (since in their eyes, its uptime would be 100% on your target).

Reaper's Mark has no such double utility. It does no actual damage and requires a comparatively much more difficult condition to proc its buff. There really is no reason to ever use Reaper's Mark over Elemental Drain in PvP with the current 5 second duration. Some combination of a) lowering the bar on the proc threshold or b) greatly increasing the duration of Major Berserk would perhaps begin to justify its presence on bars again.

Tommy_The_Gun

So I did not know exactly where to post it as there is no Racial passive official feedback thread, however it is combat related...

Argonian racial passives feels... underwhelming to say the least...

Their Resourceful passive took a quite substantial reduction in its effectiveness (3125 recurses vs 4000 recurses currently on live).

I have tried various activities, and basically sustaining on an Argonian is simply put - too hard. Even with CP (tested it with & with no CP). You can not relay on potion passive at all. It is better to try to build for passive recovery - and it means that the only good passive that Argnians have is kinda useless. Right now Argonians have almost "zero" offensive potential, and on top of that they no longer have decent sustain too. Healing bonus they have is also "laughably low.."

Since ESO launched, Argonians were known to have very good sustain, no matter if you are stamina or magicka build. They had no dmg bonus, as they traded basically everything to have that potion sustain passive. Not to mention - it offered a unique flavour to race & its play-style (only reptilian playable race, so it kinda makes sense as they have different metabolism etc).

Stamina bonus is nice, but it wont make Argonians a decent stam dps. Poison resistance instead of disease immunity is very nice and also fits perfectly (lore).

My pain points:

Life Mender:
It feels... like this passive is not there. I can place points out of it and I can barely notice any difference. To put it into perspective - Swimming speed bonus seems more impactful than this healing bonus... it is that weak.... 6% healing done only...
Meanwhile gear set bonus is 4%... As far as I can tell, when it was changed during racial rebalance the gear set bonus was 2%. Later on it was buffed to 4%, but Argonian passive was left untouched.

^ It needs to be looked at as this passive seems to be below current standards.

Resourceful:
Nerf in effective to this passive feels like it is too big. This passive was always mathematically stronger as it is not affected by passive % recovery bonus and CP and it requires a consumable to use. So it has quite a substitutional kiss-curse effect. Also, it is important to remember that situations when you will actually use its full potential (recover all 3 resources) are extremely rare. Most of the time you use it to get one or two resource pools back and the 3rd is almost always wasted.

I remember that during racial rebalance in Wrathstone, 2+ years ago, there were also some troubles with determining value of this passive as by its nature - it is supposed to be slightly stronger (kiss-curse effect).

As for the CP, there is no CP that would correspond with this type of potion based recovery & sustain either. There is no CP that would increase resources restored by potion or a way to reduce potion cooldown with CP.

^ It is another thing that needs to be looked at, as it feels incoherent.

Now, since we have another racial passive re-balance, last thing I would like to see is some race becoming more useless than it already is for the next 2 years. Currently, on live Argonians are ok-ish tanks and that is pretty much it. They are worst in terms of DPS and even not good when it comes to healer role. They are not "meta" and are considered one of the worst races in terms of passives (if not the worse).

To put this into perspective - If current PTS changes will go live - even Orcs (they have new spell dmg bonus) will be better healers and I hope it says something...

Integral1900

Racial passives don’t have a thread so I’m putting it here.

Why in the name of sanity are Nords been nerfed again! For a blessed while we were something other than hot garbage and now we get nerfed again! No, stop it! I’m sticking to Nords because I like Nords, I’m playing them in all contents of this game whether you like it or not!

Ascarl

As there is no racial passive thread I will ad my 2 pieces of gold here:

Nord nerf: while I see the reasoning for PVP and maybe tanking, the Nord race seems to be lacking right now. The tone-down would be okay if Nords would get some compensation in terms of offensive power.

Khajiit: the extra 2% damage and healing done does not offset the nerf to crit sets. Even before patch 29 Khajiit was nowhere BiS, but a honorable mention in some DD builds. No real tank use and PVP limited to niche builds due to PVP ineffectiveness of crit damage. So why the nerf?

RandomKodiak

First and most important with the massive nerf to Snipe Lethal Arrow took almost a 50% hit to damage, I am aware most people are seeing a big hit but I mean whereas my other skills took 30-40%, in the weapon that was already pretty far behind the other stam weapons. As the only viable spamable for bows you will kill bow/bow. Second the stutter and then freeze, then fire 3-8 skills is back with bows on the PTS. Please fix bows.

nqvarihs

wtb 18k crowns for my bosmers

Firstmep

Integral1900 wrote: »

Racial passives don’t have a thread so I’m putting it here.

Why in the name of sanity are Nords been nerfed again! For a blessed while we were something other than hot garbage and now we get nerfed again! No, stop it! I’m sticking to Nords because I like Nords, I’m playing them in all contents of this game whether you like it or not!

The armor bonus made nords the most popular pvp race for anything not nightblade or sorc, that's why.
I highly doubt a less than 2k armor loss will make nords worthless tanks in Pve, the ult gen passive alone already takes care of that.

ESO_Nightingale

Based on the new system this is what i would do with the "everyone runs fire" situation since its now even worse because of the new monster helmet. These suggestions doesn't include dealing with that new monster helmet or engulfing flames however. But they will work to fix some problems with the ice staff passives and to make several frost damage dealers in a group viable. Removing the brittlebot fiasco between frost damage dealers and tanks/healers running the ice staff.

Destruction Staff:

Tri focus Passive:

Shock Staff Heavy Attacks damage nearby enemies for 100% of the damage done. Shock Staff Light Attacks damage nearby enemies for 50% of the damage done.(this is being done to hopefully allow the light attack damage to scale with the ancient knowledge passive and to hopefully make it overall better for shock damage dealers.)

This passive now no longer changes your block cost to magicka when you have an ice staff equipped, instead this effect has been moved to a CP slottable passive.

Penetrating Magic Passive:
The 10% spell penetration bonus to destruction staff skills has been changed to instead provide a flat 1000 penetration with a destruction staff equipped.

Ancient Knowledge Passive:

Equipping an ice staff will increase your critical damage by 8% (this is to make the staff genuinely a damaging weapon again based on passives, but it is still usable by tanks and healers for supportive purposes.)

---

Status Effects
Chilled: chilled no longer solely applies the minor brittle debuff to enemies while a frost staff is equipped. Instead, this has been moved to a new CP perk called "Shatter Point".

---

CP
Warfare:
(New)Shatter Point:
Applying a martial or magical status effect applies minor brittle to an enemy increasing their critical damage taken by 10% for 4 seconds.(Slottable)

(Existing)Bulwark:
Increases your Spell and Physical Resistance by 1500 when you are using a Shield or a Frost Staff.

Equipping a Frost Staff reduces the cost of blocking by 36% and increases the amount of damage you block by 20%.(Slottable)

Fitness:
(New)Magicka Ward:
Changes your block cost to magicka and reduces the magicka cost by 5% per stage. (Slottable)

Trinotops

Please revert the damage nerf to Solar Barrage. I understand that Dark Flare lost damage to reflect its shorter cast time, so why nerf Barrage which has no cast time?

RPGrenade

Ever since the Markarth patch changed the Major/Minor system, the Nightblade Shadow skill line Ultimate Consuming Darkness has needed love, especially the Bolstering Darkness morph. I think giving it some kind of additional survivability boost would be great in light of the lost damage reduction.

Right now, Bolstering Darkness is not a good pick, and Veil of Blades does not help with what I would consider the core functionality of the skill (which is okay for one morph to do, but not for the only decent morph to do).

Firstmep

Trinotops wrote: »

Please revert the damage nerf to Solar Barrage. I understand that Dark Flare lost damage to reflect its shorter cast time, so why nerf Barrage which has no cast time?

They didn't nerf it. Not sure where you got that idea.

Trinotops

Firstmep wrote: »

They didn't nerf it. Not sure where you got that idea.

You're right, my bad. The patch notes weren't very clear, and when I first tested it on the PTS I forgot some passives lmao.

phantasmalD

Touching the racials was an unwise decision, you opened up a can of worms. But I guess it was unavoidable after reworking the CP.

My personal input: Argonians. Life Mender. It's a boring, limited and weak passive. It's pretty much only relevant for healers and sticks out like a sore thumb when every other race are getting universally useful boosts, aka things that don't require a hyper specific build or role.

Also would bring up some old ideas that I can remember from two years ago:
- Morphable racials, offering some slight customization. A split path for the third tier of a passive, allowing you to take a slightly different stat distribution.
-
- One racial active skill or ultimate - Something that harkons back to the old racial skills of past games.
Like for example in Oblivion:
Breton had the racial power, Dragon Skin, a Shield spell.
Dunmer had Ancestor Guardian, a summon ghost pet spell
Redguard had Adrenaline Rush, a fortify stats power
And so on.
An extra little tool to play around with.

notyuu

stamina templar still feels like a dried up corpse being proped up entirely by biting jabs due to
-no class healing
-no defensive options
-no mobility options
-no dealyed burst [2K after 6 seconds of going all out don't count]
-only one cc skill that's easily dodged
-7/9 of the ults are a literal joke with 1 being situtational and the other being good on mag build
-extremely outdated feeling passives [on that note, the soul gem star in the new cp system is literally just the templars ritual mastery passive]

Vevvev

UntouchableHunter wrote: »

I would love to see a better vampire skill line.
Werewolfs are so strong and I was waiting for something better for vampire, maybe a execute skill would be great.

You guys buffed a little the Coag blood but was not enough last patch and I feel the same. One of the most expensive class skill with a weak heal does not make sense for me.

They kinda did buff vampire with this patch though. The introduction of the magic damage status effect and the fixes to mistform have made them stronger. The status effect will also help with magic sustain, but I do agree they skill line could have gotten more. Vampiric Drain was left untouched and is still a shadow of its former self.

universal_wrath

Please make storm atronach synrgy affect the caster. Also, remove cast time spammables like crystal shard and snipe and make it instant cast. Also, make crystal weapon not related to light and geavy attacks and works like surprise attack. Can we have one morhp of mages wrath to be a stam excute or have it changed in functionaly for magicka since 1 morph is too weak and used as much as the other.

YandereGirlfriend

There is an oversight with the Dual Wield passive DUAL WIELD EXPERT.

Currently, it grants 6% of your Off-Hand Weapon Damage as additional Weapon Damage.

However, given the other passive changes that benefit both Magicka and Stamina DPS, this should be changed to grant 6% of your Off-Hand Weapon AND Spell Damage as additional Weapon AND Spell Damage.

lQrukl

Any significant buff for dd-magplar please?

Class had the worst damage potential between other magica classes and its nerfed... again.
Using dark flare as a spamable gives much less dps (even with aedric spear passive nerf), then using sweeps (tested on both live and pts).
Please, if you wanna nerf stamplars (which are really strong even with new nerf), could you nerf stamina aspect of class, not whole class. Or maybe give mana-players more, then less damaging spamable with freezing and bugging animation.

munster1404

Argonians' potion passive got nerfed again? I was wondering why my sustain seemed harder even with Infused jewelry plus potions speed glyphs.

Glantir

universal_wrath wrote: »

Please make storm atronach synrgy affect the caster. Also, remove cast time spammables like crystal shard and snipe and make it instant cast. Also, make crystal weapon not related to light and geavy attacks and works like surprise attack. Can we have one morhp of mages wrath to be a stam excute or have it changed in functionaly for magicka since 1 morph is too weak and used as much as the other.

I think even if there was a stam morph for mages fury, Stamina players have access to better execute abilities with whirling blades (dw) or executioner (2h).

At least in PvE.

Imo this skill need's a complete rework

actosh

The flat 15% mitigation and the push to base stats Are both too high and should be halfed.

twing1_

Nords definitely needed a tune down in the resistances, but why didn't they get a flat 2x set bonuses to resistances? Other races have exactly 2x set bonuses (ie 258 spell/weapon damage or 258 stamina recovery), so shouldn't Nords get 2x the set bonus for resistances? 2x 1487 would equal 2974 resistances, which isn't far off from where they are currently at with 2600.

While we are at it, the argonian healing passive should also be bumped up to 8% healing done, to reflect 2x the set bonus for healing done (4%).